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Friday, November 9, 2012

Fire On Her Tongue .

An eBook Anthology of Contemporary

Women's Poetry.

This project began as an idea shared between the two editors, Kelli Russell Agodon & Annette Spaulding-Convy, who after the purchase of a Nook and an I-Pad realised that poetry was being left behind in the eBook revolution. While technology was striving forward carrying with it, the novelists, memoirists and nonfiction writers, they felt that the poets were being left behind, and this left them with a question – could they do something about it?

So, in 2011 they set about contacting their favourite female poets and asked them if they would feature in an eBook anthology. This left them with a new question, could they successfully tackle the formatting issues that would be raised by attempting to present poetry in this way, could they as editors of a print journal, publish the first eBook of contemporary women’s poetry?

The result is Fire On Her Tongue, proudly featuring over 70 poets, each represented by several of their works and each having a small bio with a link to their own site. The poets age ranges from thirteen to ninety one and cover most of the USA, some are urban, some rural, some are academics or professionals, some are stay at home Mums, but all are poets.

Negative Four Hundred.

The rain carves patterns

into my window.

***********************

It will be different this time,

I promise,

The words crisscross over

stones.

******************

I remember she told me,

Curved hips,

they are like waves.

****************

She could hear my heartbeats,

every breath.

***********

Every day we mapped it,

found a beginning but no end.

**********

I whisper the name

of my being:

human.

*************Maya Ganasen

This is a collection I’ve had for a while now and I’m constantly amazed at the range of poetry contained within it’s electronic pages. Yes they are all predominantly written by women living in America, which does limit it to an anthology of contemporary American women’s poetry, which would be a more accurate title, but that’s just a small niggle, and one that doesn’t fit with the ethos behind Fire On Her Tongue, which was to represent Kelli Russell Agodon & Annette Spaulding-Convy favourite female poets in a way that would do them justice, in a way that left a zero carbon footprint, and was available on most eBook formats, such as Kindle, Nook, iBooks, Sony Reader, and other eBook retailers.

This is a worthy addition to any E-library, in fact any library and one that you could constantly dive into and find new gems, maybe by poets already known but also by poets yet to have hit the mainstream of this genre, in this respect it provides a wonderful overview of the state of women’s poetry in America today and if this collection is anything to go by, it appears to be alive, well and vibrant, truly vibrant.

Because You Are Dying, And Other Excuses.

I confess that I have been less

than I:

less mother, daughter, wife.

I confess

**********************

I’ve forgotten to pay

the quarterly taxes, attention

to the larger particulars. I confess

*****************************

that I have turned off my phone.

Turned it on only

when guilt rang,

and

***********************

I confess to the cookbook

I’d rather read than bake a cake, make

lasagne with pesto, confess to

*********************************

the checkbook I’d rather siesta

than shop for gifts for the birthday

we’ll celebrate, three days

late.

***************************

I confess to the eggs in the pan

forgotten in the pan

(forgotten in the pan)

so long in the pan

****************************

blackened, the eggs

a shell

of their former selves. I confess

************************************

to the trash bin that accepted

these two small murders without question

the air confessing my transgressions

*****************************************

my never-enough

my les-than.

*************************Ronda Broatch

Two Sylvias Press was founded in 2010 by poets Kelli Russell Agodon and Annette Spaulding-Convy (Co-Editors of Crab Creek Review literary journal). Two Sylvias Press draws its inspiration from the poetic literary talent of Sylvia Plath and the editorial business sense of Sylvia Beach. We are dedicated to publishing the exceptional voices of women

Kelli Russell Agodon is the author of Letters from the Emily Dickinson Room (White Pine Press, 2010), Winner of the ForeWord Magazine Book of the Year Prize in Poetry and Washington State Book Award Finalist. She is also the author of Small Knots (2004) and Geography, winner of the 2003 Floating Bridge Press Chapbook Award. She is the co-editor of Seattle’s literary journal, Crab Creek Review and the co-founder of Two Sylvias Press. Kelli blogs at Book of Kells:www.ofkells.blogspot.comor her website:www.agodon.com

Annette Spaulding-Convy’s full length collection, In Broken Latin, will be published by the University of Arkansas Press (Fall 2012) as a finalist for the Miller Williams Poetry Prize. Her chapbook, In The Convent We Become Clouds, won the 2006 Floating Bridge Press Chapbook Award and was nominated for a Pushcart Prize. Her poems have appeared in Prairie Schooner, North American Review, Crab Orchard Review and in the International Feminist Journal of Politics, among others. She is co-editor of the literary journal, Crab Creek Review, and is co-founder of Two Sylvias Press. Visit Annette: http://www.annettespauldingconvy.com/

4 comments:

I wonder if poetry is a form which really does benefit from a paper copy rather than ebook. I have several poetry collections on the Kindle, but don't find they work as well as the books on the shelf. Maybe I'm being particularly stingy but in terms of words per buck, poetry is poor value on ebooks, but paper poetry books are usually beautifully designed and have a good look and feel.